Jobcentre staff shred wrong papers

More than 220,000 files relating to payments from the Government's Social Fund, which administers loans and grants, were accidentally destroyed by jobcentre staff in the past year in a paper reduction exercise.

By The Newsroom

Published 2nd Dec 2010, 22:28 BST

Updated 2nd Dec 2010, 22:28 BST

The National Audit Office (NAO) said missing case papers was a "significant" issue which had been compounded by the loss of so many files.

The comptroller and auditor general, Amyas Morse, revealed the blunder yesterday as he said he had qualified the Social Fund White Paper Account for the seventh consecutive year because of "material levels of error" in discretionary awards, which include budgeting loans, crisis loans and community care grants, and in funeral expense payments.

He has also qualified his opinion on Sure Start maternity grants, for the first time, because of the level of error found in these payments.

The NAO said its best estimate of the total of overpayments in 2009/10 was 106.4m, about 2.6 per cent of total payments, up from 83.5m in 2008/09.

The true level of overpayments, though, could be between 82m to 130m, the NAO said in a report.